


Dust & Desire

by DarknessAroundUs



Series: Supernatural AU [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Betty the Vampire Slayer, F/M, High School, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16425686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: They have a rhythm to their days, the result of having very little company but each other for years now. When Betty wakes from the nap, they eat mac and cheese before they go hunting.A Vampire Slayer AU.





	Dust & Desire

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Virtue & Vices day 3, vampires.

In Betty Cooper’s senior year of High School her English teacher goes rogue and dedicates the first two months of class to books of longing. She focuses first on Beloved by Toni Morrison, and then on The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides. The final unit before Christmas break is not devoted to reading, but to writing. 

The whole class is required to write an eight-page essay or work of fiction devoted to longing. Students take wildly different approaches. Reggie Mantle writes about the desire he feels for a football scholarship. Ethel Mugs writes an epic poem about a peasant girl pining for a prince. 

Betty writes about the life she wishes she was living. She never ends up handing it in. She and Jughead Jones skip town before it is her turn to read her essay to the rest of the class. They move every three months, and every winter they head south. 

Jughead finds the essay once they are settled, or as settled as one can be while living out of a camper van, in Tallahassee, Florida. Betty had hidden the essay in their Vanagon, underneath the built in bed, that they trade off, even after two years on the road together. 

Jughead debates reading it. He knows she must have hid the paper for a reason. But if she had really not wanted him to read it, she would have thrown it out. The Vanagon is tiny, and they keep as few items as possible in it.

Jughead resists temptation for three days. But on the third day he gives in while Betty is at school. Jughead graduated last spring. Sometimes he works odd jobs during the day, but mostly he sleeps. He reads Betty’s essay while drinking coffee and smoking. He tries not to smoke while Betty’s around (“Those things will kill you Juggie.” “Our job will kill us first Betts”). 

The essay starts off with a description of Betty’s house, the one she used to live in when they first met. The house she grew up in. It talks about the pink walls of Betty’s room, her much loved book collection. It doesn’t talk at all about how Jughead and she had to burn that house down. 

The essay is an ode to the life she would have lived. She talks about the college she hoped to go to, her family, her friends. It praises a mundane existence of classes, cheerleading practices, long evenings spent in peaceful conversation over French fries, the idea of a first date, a first kiss. The essay is an ode to a life Betty will never have again, one that she states no longer feels like it was even real. 

Jughead is in tears when he finishes it. Not that he admits this to Betty when she gets back from class, but he does confess that he’s read it. She shrugs her response before taking a two-hour nap. 

They have a rhythm to their days, the result of having very little company but each other for years now. When Betty wakes from the nap, they eat mac and cheese before they go hunting. 

The Vampire community in Tallahassee is different than they’re used to. The other Hunter they know here, Artie Wu, had warned them of this in advance when he’d asked for their aid. 

Half of the Vampires in Tallahassee were in control of their urges. They found ways to obtain sustenance that did not involve harming people or animals in any ways. They lived in a way that didn’t affect the Normals around them. 

All of these Vampires hung out at the same bar (McNally’s) most nights, and they answered to the same leader, Martin. 

This was unusual. Jughead and Betty had never encountered such a phenomenon before. This should have made Artie’s job as the resident Hunter, easy. It had in the past. However over the last year something had changed. Artie suspected it involved a some of the students on campus, but maybe he was wrong. 

Someone was making new Vampires at an unsustainable rate. One new one almost every night, sometimes more. Artie really should have called them earlier, because the problem is already out of hand by the time they arrived. 

In most towns Betty and Jughead could get away with hunting for just a few hours every night. But in Tallahassee, even six is insufficient. Jughead is at least able to sleep during the day, but Betty was on the verge of exhaustion. 

Jughead could see it in her eyes, even now, at the start of the night. Her eyelids were heavy, and the green of her eyes less bright. Still they made their way to the graveyard first. They killed two Vampires, both so young that killing them wasn’t a challenge. 

The next stop of the night was a group of bars off campus. Vampires lurked there, hoping for easy victims. These Vampires were more experienced, smarter, and stronger. 

Not that Jughead was weak. He’d been fighting Vampires since he was twelve. His mother was a Hunter, she had the gift that made her a Slayer. She had powerful strength, the ability to heal swiftly, and there was no way to turn her into a Vampire.

Those gifts had not been passed on to Jughead, but Gladys trained him anyways. Starting when he was very young she made him practice fighting with stakes. She made sure he grew accustomed to odd hours. Anything that she could do to help make him a better Hunter, she did. 

Before she died she gave him the name and address of an untrained Slayer in another state, one that had the gift, but no training. That’s how he ended up at Betty’s front door in Seattle, Washington two years. He rang the doorbell and she opened the door. 

Betty was wearing a blue cotton dress. Her arms and legs were on display. She couldn’t do that now, too many bruises and scars. Even a short-sleeved t-shirt was out of the question. When she only had a few scars they used to be braver about it. That was before the cashier at a Piggly Wiggly in Iowa reported him to the police (it took them three days to get Jughead out of that mess). 

Betty smiled differently back then. Jughead claimed to have known her mother, and she let him in. If only he’d known the Vampires were already on to her, then. Maybe they could have saved her family. 

Although probably not. Her parents were turned into Vampires at work. Her sister on the way home from school. Within two days Betty and Jughead had to slay them all. They covered it up by burning down the house. It felt like the only appropriate thing to do given the situation. It was a hard way to forge a partnership or a friendship, but somehow, they did just that. 

It helped that they were both bookish. That the first thing both of them wanted to do when they moved to a new town was get a library card. 

But now they were outside the row of college bars. They hadn’t brought the van, Jughead was leaning against the side of a building and smoking. Betty might tell Jughead to stop during the day but at night there was no better excuse to be outside a bar than a cigarette. 

They were standing near a dumpster, four cigarettes into their stakeout, when a Vampire walked out of The Blue Horse Tavern. Jughead was terrible at telling Vampires from Normals, but Betty had a sixth sense about her, she knew right away. She shot him a look that conveyed what they were up against.

Jughead removed his stake from his belt. Betty’s was already out of the lining of her light green Jacket. The Vampire wasn’t paying attention to either of them. Instead it was focused on the victim to be, a small woman with brown hair. The Vampire was holding her hand. She was clearly thinking hook up, and he was clearly thinking meal. 

This complicated things a little. It was easier to kill a Vampire without any civilians around. But they didn’t really have a choice. Betty and Jughead followed the vampire, a red head, down the conveniently dark alley.

When the read head glanced back at them Betty took her chance and ran at him with all her strength, all her speed, stake out and ready. Seconds later the brunette was shocked to find herself holding no ones hand. The occupants of the alley suddenly and decisively reduced to three. 

Betty and Jughead ran away before she could ask any questions. It was just easier that way, after a brisk walk around the block they returned to their post. Jughead was huffing louder than Betty, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to light another cigarette. 

“You know what I long for?” Jughead asked. He’d been thinking about the essay all night. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The truth was he longed for only two things anymore. He was prepared to tell Betty only one of them.

“What?”

“A way to make you feel safe again, the way you felt before you met me.” He exhales, not brave enough to meet her eyes right now. When he looks back at her, he finds that she is looking down at her Keds.

“I don’t want to go back to that life, the life of not knowing about what goes bump in the night, is not for me.” Betty’s eyes meet his now, and he knows that she is telling him the truth. 

They’ve spent years together now, and many hours standing in dark alleys waiting for bad things to happen. He’s liked her through all that. He liked her from the first moment he met her. The front door swinging open, revealing the girl in the blue dress. 

But in all that time he’s never done anything about it. He thought he might go through the whole rest of his life, however long or short that is, not doing anything about it. If he were to write an essay of longing it would be all about Betty.

The longing to keep her safe, the longing to give her good things, the longing to kiss her - the longing for more than that. He looks at her in the dim light of the alley. Her hair is back in a ponytail. She’s wearing an old leather Jacket and a pair of jeans that are torn, still she glows. 

It’s not just the way she looks exactly, but the way she is. Like how she always sneaks scraps to the stray cats, even when they’re barely scraping by themselves. Or how she writes little poems in her notebook everyday, just because she can. How she can go from dusting a vamp, to offering a homeless person change. 

She turns towards him again, places a scarred had on his, and says “Don’t overthink the essay. It was just an assignment.”

He doesn’t know what gives him the courage to kiss her after all these years, but something does. He places his lips to hers, surprising himself with his boldness. She surprises him by kissing back.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I’m all about the supernatural/magical this month, because I couldn’t resist this plot bunny when it jumped into my head. It was also nice to write because the first Fandom I ever wrote in was BTVS. I kept wanting to turn this into a full blown story/universe, but forced myself to stop it here, because I already have one magical WIP.


End file.
